Like An Ocean Through a Sieve
by Vashti
Summary: "Floating just above the surface of their graves   Her nightmares wait to come again   When she wakes" - Leigh Nash


**Title:** Like An Ocean Through a Sieve  
**Author:** Vashti  
**Fandom:** Inception  
**Character(s):** Ariadne, Phillipa Cobb, Dominic Cobb, James Cobb, Eames, Arthur  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** It may hurt to see him like this, but there's nothing she won't do to help Dominic Cobb.  
**Length:** ~5,000 words  
**Disclaimer:** _Inception_, its characters and world are owned by Christopher Nolan and Warner Brothers Studios. No profit is intended to be made from this work of fiction. "Sabine" is used with permission from Lattelady, who is the author of the amazing _Inception_ fic "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" from which Sabine hails. Try it, you'll like it. "Eyes Wide Open" is written by Leigh Nash and performed by Sixpence None the Richer  
**Author's Notes:** See end.

* * *

Like An Ocean Through a Sieve  
by Vashti

_Time keeps ticking like an ocean through a sieve  
ever onward, ever forward in a march_

_Time to go back to life, back to dreams without tears  
She's saving what she kills_

_She's saying goodbye, bye, bye to the world now _- Leigh Nash

Ariadne opened the door of her little rental car and stepped out from behind the wheel. Leaning on the open door, she paused to take in the sight of the modified bungalow-style house at the end of the drive. The style had seemed huge and comforting when she was a child. As an adult, however, the low porch with it's wide-base/narrow-top pillars encased in river stones made it feel short and squat, even cave-like. She closed her eyes against a wave of emotion.

She'd never been this close to the house before. Not on this side.

Bright spears of laughter opened her eyes, but there was nothing to see. The children, the man—they were out of sight at the rear of the house. If she stretched her mind a little, just a little, she could see it from where she stood behind her open car door. Any more than that and she'd set off the projections.

Ariadne scrubbed her face with her palms, then pulled her hair back into a hasty ponytail. She stepped away from the car and slammed the door shut.

The laughter stopped. Car doors slamming weren't totally outside the norm for this neighborhood, sparsely populated though it was, but no guests were expected today. They would have played on the front porch, otherwise, or the front door would be open in welcome. The house was off the beaten path, far enough for traffic to be muted by tall pine trees. The backside of the house ran down a gentle slope that would have been ideal for sledding in another climate. Some hundred feet beyond the property line, through a swath of more pines, the land dropped off suddenly into a steep ravine.

They'd always been warned about the trees.

Curious, high-pitched voices carried as she made her way along the gravel drive. Bricked drive. Gravel.

She'd parked further away than she'd realized. Or perhaps...

Never mind, she told herself. A shifting driveway was the least of her issues.

The children's questions were answered in counterpoint by a light tenor, all of them making their way toward her. Ariadne quickly rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, squared her shoulders, and pasted a pleasant smile across her face. She kept her eyes up and steady, knowing where he would...

"Ariadne!"

Her smiled turned genuine at the pleasure on Dominic Cobb's face. She could, did, live for this. "Hey, Cobb."

He quickened his steps, lightly pulling his children behind him. "But what are you doing here? I thought you were going to meet your folks and go visit your brother out in, a..."

"Philly. Philadelphia. He's going to school out there."

"Right, right." He gave her a quick appraising look. "So what are you doing here—Ah, before I forget, let me introduce my children." The pleasure on his face turned to pure joy.

Ariadne tried to hold her heart together.

"This tow-head is Phillipa," he said as he dropped a heavy hand on his daughter's head. She pretended to be offended, but was clearly delighted by the act. "Although her hair's already starting to darken, so I won't be able to call you that for much longer, will I Blondie-Bear?"

"No way, Poppa Bear!"

Chuckling, Cobb picked up his son, forcing Ariadne to look at him or seem completely odd. "And _this_ tow-head is James."

"And I'll never get darkened! I'll _always _be towed."

Ariadne laughed. There was a tightness in her chest, but she managed. She clenched her fingers into fists instead of running them through the little boy's hair. She knew it was silky. She knew it was thick.

"Do you want to come in?" Cobb asked her.

"No! No. I was just passing through—"

"Here?"

A corner of Ariadne's lips lifted. "Sort of. I did want to see how you were doing after..." She trailed off as a familiar and spare guitar-melody distantly filled the air. Ariadne glanced at Phillipa, watching her intently, and at James whose attention was caught on something over all their heads. Two fingers of one hand were stuck in his mouth, while the other gripped his father's shirt at the shoulder.

"...well after everything," she said finally. "And it looks like you're doing okay."

Cobb's smile was more subdued than she would have imagined when he said, "It's better. It's not perfect, but it's a huge step in the right direction." At Ariadne's nod of agreement he put James down and shooed the kids away. They ran towards the back of the house.

"Watch the pines!" he shouted after them. Then to Ariadne, "Are you sure you won't come in? Have some coffee? Not draw up incredible, impossible plans for saving my life?"

Smiling, Ariadne nodded quickly. She briefly looked beyond Cobb, beyond the house and the trees, hearing the snatch of a song she'd played endlessly over the last few days and weeks she'd been working on this.

Ever attentive, Cobb cocked his head to one side, leaning down a bit to really look at Ariadne. "Are you sure you're okay. You...you look like... You look like you might cry."

"Really? Oh, then I've really got to go," she said lightly, but Cobb didn't smile. "No, but seriously, I'm happy for you. I wish it was...perfect...like you said, but I'm glad it's better."

"You were a big part of making that happen, Ariadne. I've never really thanked you for all you've done."

"You don't need to thank me," she said softly. "How could I not." Sniffing loudly, she stuck out her hand and he took it. "Maybe next time I pass through, I'll have that coffee," she said more firmly.

Still studying her, he nodded. "I'd like that."

"Maybe by then Phillipa's hair will have darkened."

Cobb chuckled. "Hopefully it won't take you that long to come back." He insisted on walking her back to the rental car; and he was standing in the drive, a tiny figure in her rear-view mirror, until she hit the first curve in the road and the house disappeared from view.

The sky was gone dark and turbulent by then, a pounding piano chasing her down the road.

* * *

Arthur looked up from the specs at his feet as the monitors on the last sleeper screamed a warning. "Hey! Hey, Phillipa, I'm right here."

He caught the young woman as she slid, weeping, out of her chair.

"Let me go, Uncle Arthur," she sobbed even as she looped strong, narrow arms around his neck.

"Do you want me to get Christopher?"

She shook her head, soaking his shirt with tears and snot. Eames showed up anyway, not long afterward. Quickly taking in the situation, he quietly detached Phillipa from the PASIV first, then the nutrient drip in her other arm. He cleansed the wounds before removing the various sensors attached to her pulse points as the older man held and consoled her. Together with Eames' help, Arthur managed to get into Phillipa's chair with the young woman in his lap. Arthur nodded when Eames caught his eye—he could take care of her.

"Your grandfather is here," Arthur said some time later when she was quiet and calm, but no less willing to be comforted.

Phillipa unhooked her arms from her uncle's neck so she could turn to look at the door. She gave the elder man a soft smile. "What time is it?"

"Late, young lady. Your grandmother has sent me to fetch you both."

She nodded, slipping from her uncle's lap and pushing her hair out of her face. It was almost strange to find it loose. "I'm sorry for all of that."

Arthur shrugged. "The last few years have been hard. And then the Fisher job comes and..." He glanced at the man in the bed. "I know how hard it's been to come this close and then..." He coughed. "My dry cleaner's been in need of a challenge, anyway."

Phillipa wrinkled her nose before drawing the back of her hand across it. "Sorry."

"S'ok." He heaved himself out of the chair.

"Are you ready to go, Phillipa?" Miles asked.

She nodded. "Let me just get cleaned up. I don't want to freak out Gram."

"Smart girl. I'll wait for you in the nurse's station?"

"Yeah. Be there in fifteen minutes."

Arthur went to get their things out of the closet. He handed her her overnight bag. "I'll be with Miles."

Phillipa nodded and headed for the washroom. The mirror and stark fluorescent lights highlighted the red splotches on her otherwise pale face. There were dark, dark circles under her eyes—circles that highlighted just how green her eyes were. That was always the strangest part, the thing that always startled her most coming out of a dream. They all spent so much time down in the dream-space that it was easy to forget that her eyes were not a rich rich brown, but were as vividly green as her mother's had been. These days it seemed that was all she and James had in common—the color of their eyes.

Turning away from her reflection, Phillipa grabbed a washcloth off the rack, soaked it in cold water, then squeezed the excess out so she could placed it over her face. She wet it again and, still tightly twisted, held it to her neck, over her arteries, to help cool her down. When she looked at herself again some of the redness on her skin had cleared. She returned the washcloth to the rack and got a new one. After more than twenty-five hours under, there were always a myriad of personal needs that needed seeing to, and though she felt truly disgusting she was glad that her uncle hadn't decided to handle that for her as well. Phillipa closed the door.

* * *

Clean and changed into a new set of clothes, Phillipa fished her phone out her back pocket and walked back into the room. Thinking that she would be following right behind them, either her grandfather or uncle had dimmed the lights. Phillipa put her money on Uncle Arthur.

_"This is James Cobb's phone. Millicent speaking. How may I help you?" _There was laughter in the background.

"Yeah, hey Milly, it's Phillipa."

_"Hey, Phillipa! You want James? He's right here."_ In the background, Phillipa could hear an annoyed male voice—James—and Milly's retort that she wished she had siblings who cared, or siblings at all, so here take it. There was a distant, _Jeez, Milly!_ Then,_"Hey Phil."_

"I feel so much love coming from you right now, little brother, that my cell phone's going to start broadcasting hearts instead of a signal." Phillipa rushed ahead to fill her brother's oncoming silence, "Look, I know you'd rather not hear from me because hearing from me means hearing about Dad-"

_"Then why do you call?"_

"Because not calling would a) mean I care what you think and b) mean that I have given up on you completely. Which would c) mean that I could put money into my bank account instead of bleeding myself dry to send you to school."

This time she let the silence sit for a moment. She was angry, and upset that she was angry. They hadn't been on the phone five minutes and it was already a fight.

Phillipa took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She started again. "So I think we've finally turned a corner. We've made a breakthrough."

_"You've said that before, Phil,"_ James said, sounding more like a tired middle-aged man after a long day at work than an active 18 year old college student hanging out with his girlfriend.

Phillipa began to pace, weaving in and around reclining chairs, her father's bed, the dreaming equipment and the detritus of lives lived in someone else's hospital room. "I know I have. I know. And they were corners, but not like this. He spent this entire dreaming session, all... Good Lord, I have no idea how long we were under. More than a day. But basically the whole thing? The whole time? He was trying to find the two of us. He created a really whacked out scenario, he recast past players, he laid himself completely bare to someone he thought was a virtual stranger... Dad even put what he thought was his 'team' at risk of dropping into the craziness of the unformed subconscious on the hope that he would get back to us."

_"And...?"_

Phillipa took another deep breath, but she let it out in a huff. "And he did, but it was the five- and three-year old versions of us."

_"Phillipa..."_

She could hear the exasperation in her brother's voice. She could all but see the look on his face and made one back as she stepped over something in the semi-dark. "Jamie, you don't understand. He wasn't trying before. It was all about Mal. Always about Mal—getting back to her, appeasing her, convincing her. Whatever. We were secondary, or a tool for reaching her. But this time? This time it was about _ us_. About the real world. He even drew in projections of Grandpa and Eames and Dr. Saito to make it happen. Dr. Saito! Me, Uncle Arthur and Mr. Yusuf were the only ones down there with him."

_"So what does that mean?"_

"It means, you idiot, that Dad is trying to come back to us. He just can't fathom that his kids are, like, adults. Which makes sense since he shot himself when we were 9 and 6. That fourteen years have passed is absolutely beyond him. But we can fix that."

_"Wait. What? What is this 'we,' Phillipa? You know I don't want to be involved in any of this."_

"Well you're gonna be the next time you come home."

_"Phil-"_

"It's our father," she hissed into the phone, wrapping her other arm around her waist. She stood stock-still in the middle of the darkened room for a moment, letting her fury wash over her.

_"Who didn't believe we were real so he attempted suicide three years after our mother jumped out of a window. He's barely had any part in our lives at all."_

"Yeah, well I had every part in your life. I half raised you, and I'm telling you that you're coming to the hospital, you're getting hooked up to the PASIV, and you're going into one of these dreams for Dad." She was weaving her way in the space between the three reclining chairs as she bit out the words. "It'll be five minutes of your life that could mean the rest of his."

Silence reigned between them again. James had a sour look on his face. Pacing the room, Phillipa could see it on him despite the distance. This was an old argument.

_"What if I don't come home?"_

Phillipa rolled her eyes at his petulance. "How old are you again?" She stopped pacing to look outside. Staring past her reflection into the cold night, she said, "You're coming home. You're getting hooked up to the PASIV. You're hanging out in one of the dreams. Maybe you should be the dreamer. You used to be a decent architect. It's five minutes. Heck, you probably won't make it that long." She smiled at her reflection

_ "Why not?"_

"I bet Dad's projections will kill you on sight. You look so much like yourself it's freaky." Phillipa's smile turned into a grin. "Oh, this will be great."

_ "But doesn't that hurt?"_

"Every time," she agreed. "Now I have two things to look forward to."

_ "Phillipa!"_

"What, James? What? What do you want me to say? Do you really want me to tell you that I'm giving up? Is that it? Because if you tell me that I should give up and lead a normal life..." She shook her head as her words drifted off. "How am I supposed to lead a normal life when I know, I _know_, that my father is lying in a hospital bed withering his life away in _dreams_, and I may be able to help him, but instead I decided to just...do me and let him rot? Explain that to me."

Flushed and her heart pounding loud in her ears, Phillipa barely heard her brother backpedal. She pressed her forehead to the window, then her left cheek and her right—anything to calm the raging fever on her skin. This was an old, old argument.

_"I just think you've got this idea, this...this..."_ She knew James was searching for any word other than 'dream.' _"..._hope_ for something that's never going to happen. Every time you 'turn a corner' or have some new breakthrough, you're jazzed for a little while until Dad doesn't come out of it. This time it's your wedding on the line."_

"Daddy is walking me down the aisle."

_"He's been in a coma for fourteen years, Phil."_

"Fine, so he'll wheel me down the aisle. Or I'll push him. I don't care." She turned her back to the window to look at their father. "Look, Jamie, there are a lot of things I regret when it comes to us and Dad. There are promises I made to you that I simply couldn't keep. You don't know how..."

Phillipa stopped and took an open-mouthed breath as her eyes filled with tears. It had become difficult to breath. "...how much it _hurt_ to not have him there at your Little League games, or to watch you come in third at track and field all the time. That I had to be the one you went to for advice on girls? It broke my heart whenever I spent more than half a moment thinking about it. And while I'm sure Grandpa is an amazing male role-model, it should have been Dad you went hiking with and Dad who bought you your first jock-strap, disgusting though that is." She could hear the wetness in her brother's voice as they both chuckled.

"Yeah, we've turned corners and had breakthroughs and made milestones, and all that other crap before without Dad actually waking up. It's been hard." She took a swipe at her eyes. "Really hard."

_"And I don't think you should go through that anymore, Phillipa,"_ James said with an earnestness that belied his youth—or emphasized it. _"I may be your little brother, but I am a guy. I'm telling you, Eames is not going to wait forever just so Dad can walk you down the aisle."_

"Christopher and I have already discussed it," she said tightly.

After a moment she unclenched her jaw and sighed. "But you're right. And I wouldn't expect him to anyway. I don't expect him to have to. Jamie, you're not here so you don't really get how far we've come with dream-sharing. We're doing things now that Dad couldn't have imagined when he shot himself in 2013. I know, because he's not imagining anything like it now.

"In our last shared dream, attempting to go three levels down was a freaking big dangerous deal for him. He has no idea that he was a _five_ levels down before we broke into limbo. Five mostly stable levels. And for three of those levels, Dr. Saito, Eames and Grandpa were all piggybacking on me and Uncle Arthur with full sensory awareness even though they weren't playable characters. When Dad and Uncle Arthur were first dreaming, you could only see and know what you yourself were doing. Now, so long as I'm careful, I can be just as world-aware of what's going on as the dreamer without alerting the subject's projections.

"I'm telling you the truth, Jamie, we have gotten further along with Dad in the last two years than the other five years I've been working on this project. Even pessimistic Mr. Yusuf, brilliant chemist but skeptical realist to the end, is excited about what we're doing. Dad _will_ walk me down the aisle. He _will_ give you Mom's ring to give to Milly, or some other nice girl. Personally, though, I'm voting for Milly."

_"Phillipa—"_

"James—"

_"I don't..."_ He took a deep breath and let it out in a long low sigh that Phillipa could hear. _"Sometimes I wish I was the older one so I could at least try to order you to stop. As if that'd do any good," _he added almost to himself. _"It's hard seeing Dad like that, even if most of my memories of him are in that bed."_

Phillipa raised her free hand to her mouth and nose, and nodded. Voice thick with tears, she said, "I know. I know it is. But we're closer than we've ever been. I just need you here now, Jamie. I need him to see the little boy he's finally started to search for in the young man that he's never met."

_"Why, Phil? Explain that to me."_

"Because it will create a conflict." She pushed off the windowsill and began pacing again. "He's got dream-versions of us, but they're little kids because that's all he really knows. But even though he's been in a coma all this time it's not like his hearing's malfunctioned. Fourteen years of hearing Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's? Fourteen years of 'Happy Birthday to you' being sung by a really questionable choir? Some of that had to have sunk in. He told me when I was down there that he was happy, but that there was still work to do. He knows something's missing, he just doesn't know what it is. And Mal recognized me as someone familiar this time, in spite of the forgery, and tried to kill me twice. The first time I was messing around with the architecture too much, so that doesn't count. But the second time I was just a visitor. His other projections ignored me, but Mal?" She couldn't bring herself to tell him that she'd shot the projection of their mother.

"I think seeing you will be like..." Phillipa made tightly controlled turns around the reclining chairs as she searched for the word. "...like a lightning rod! Seeing a man-sized version of his little boy will send a shock to his system that will, hopefully, galvanize him to really explore the world he's creating. Which will lead to dissatisfaction and questions and, eventually, _out_. Out of the dream world and into real life."

_"Where he hasn't been for over a decade."_

Phillipa stopped her pacing and shrugged. "Yeah, well, I'm ambitious and stubborn as a mule. What kind of Cobb would I be, otherwise?"

_"Corn on the cob, that's what,"_ he said, completing their old joke. He wasn't laughing.

"Anyway, I have to go. Gram's making dinner and Uncle Arthur and Grandpa are waiting for me at the nurses' station. Tell Milly I said hi."

_ "Yeah, I will, but wait Phil, I want to talk some more-"_

"Think on what I've said some more instead. Then you can talk to me. Night, Jamie." She flipped her phone closed before he could respond. She knew James loved their father, but he'd never felt the drive that she had to rescue him from the maze of his subconscious. James had more memories of their grandfather, a man they'd only see a few times a year while he'd been actively teaching in Paris, than he did of his father. But she'd made some promises to him and herself the day Dominic Cobb tried "release" himself from a dream. She'd never been so close to fulfilling them before.

Phillipa slipped her phone into her back pocket and turned to her father. She knelt up on the bed and leaned over to give him a hug. Pushing herself back, she brushed his hair out of his face. "You're starting to look way too hot with all this hair, Poppa Bear," she whispered. After all the shouting she'd done on the phone, it seemed only right that she whisper now. "I'm going to have to beat the nurses back with a stick." Leaning forward again, she quickly kissed his forehead before slipping off the bed.

* * *

The nurses' station was particularly quiet when she finally made her way there. Her uncle and grandfather were nowhere to be seen, but another welcome face was.

Eames wrapped her in a big, comforting hug. For a long moment they held each other without speaking, until Phillipa looked up at him. "What're you doing here?"

"Arthur and Miles went on ahead. I said I'd wait and take you."

"Have you been here a long time? Wait, Grandma's letting you in the house?"

A mischievous smile pulled at one side of his mouth. "You put a ring on the granddaughter's finger, and it's amazing how welcoming the grandmother becomes. C'mon, let's go. That I'm invited to dinner doesn't mean she actually likes me."

"So you haven't won her over." She shrugged, letting it go. Phillipa was not so blinded by Eames many qualities that she was unaware of his shortcomings, despite her grandmother's misgivings. She realized, however, just how protective her grandmother, an only-child herself, was of the precious few family members she had left. "I just wish she'd stop calling you a cradle-robber."

"You heard that, then?" Still, Eames' smile came into full-bloom. "Give me time, sweetheart. I'll be Sabine's favorite yet."

Laughing, Phillipa handed him her overnight bag as they left the ward, then threaded her right arm through the circle he made with his hand in his pocket. "Incorrigible."

The ride down from the dream ward (a name James had given it when they were children and was now used almost universally within the hospital) was largely silent as Phillipa leaned heavily against Eames. Somewhere around the fourth floor, however, he cleared his throat. Phillipa rolled her eyes up to look up at him. "You okay? That cold coming back?" It was the reason he'd only been able to be observe the last dream.

"Just thinking."

"Dangerous words from someone's who's not only working on their doctorate in psychology but is also a skilled thief."

"And forger."

Phillipa shook her head. "Yes, let me not forget...

"You taught me everything I know." "I taught you everything you know." They said together. Eames grinned. Phillipa pulled a face.

"So, what's on your mind?"

"Your uncle."

The elevator door opened and they shuffled out. It was very late, and the ground floor was nearly deserted. "What about Uncle Arthur?" Phillipa asked as they paused to do up their winter coats and pull on their hats and gloves. "He likes you just fine. Mostly."

Hefting her overnight bag onto his shoulder again, Eames shrugged. "Just that kiss."

Phillipa frowned at her reflection as it quickly approaching her in the pneumatic doors. The first set swished open as she asked, "What kiss?"

"The one on the second—no, the fourth level down."

The second set of pneumatic doors opened, but Phillipa stopped to figure out what the heck he was talking about.

Eames, however, was more than a few steps outside before he realized she hadn't followed him. He came back for her and tugged her hat down over her eyes. "In the hotel lobby," he called out over his shoulder as went back outside.

"Oh. Oh! That?" She pulled her hat up and quickly followed Eames out. "Why? Uncle Arthur's my Uncle Arthur. He's, like..." She quickly did the math in her head. "...twenty years older than me? More? He's seeing someone. Again. Third one this year and it's only February."

"Did you know Arthur had a thing for your mum?"

Slipping her arm through Eames' arm again, she shrugged. "Mom was a beautiful woman."

"And did you that you are her very likeness, darling?"

"Considering how Dad reacted the first time I dreamed with him, yes, I—" Phillipa stopped in her tracks, pulling hard on Eames. "Ew, are you saying my uncle, whose best shoes I've apparently pooped on not once but twice as an infant, has the hots for me?"

Eames turned to face her, looking down to meet her vibrant green eyes and cold-bright cheeks. "I have the hots for you."

Phillipa smirked. "Yeah, but you're a dirty old man."

Eames eyes closed with mock-pain. "_Please_ don't say that in front of your grandmother. You'll ruin the very delicate net I've been weaving around her regard for me."

Standing on tiptoe, she kissed Eames' chin since he wouldn't lean down. "You were riding my mind. You know that kiss was as romantic as making out with a CPR doll. Unlike you, my uncle is a stodgy old man, though handsome and debonair. Which is why he goes through women like handkerchiefs. None of them are fastidious enough to maintain his standards. Luckily babies get a pass."

Grinning, Eames swooped down to kiss Phillipa on the mouth, fast and hard. He rested his forehead against hers. "Knew there was a reason I had to marry you, sweetheart."

[in]Fin[ite]

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I have a few _Inception_ fic ideas bumping around my head, but mostly they're in the idea stage. This one, however, grabbed me and nearly started writing itself. It's much, much longer than I thought it'd be, but after many revisions and sitting up with it way too long (I'm sick, btw) it's done and I'm pretty pleased. For those who also belong to LJ fandom, I'd like to post this to a comm but where, so if anyone has any ideas please share. (I love this movie _hard_, but ironically, I only belong to one _Inception_ comm.) Also, I'm not sure about the rating. If anyone thinks it should be bumped up to PG-13, do share.


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